My Wife The Hero Recently my wife did something that many people think about all the time. I don't know if for you it was positive or negative but at some point everyone has thought/worried/wondered about what it would be like to do something different, to not accept the job you have as the job you always will have. My wife took the gigantic leap of faith this past week and I am the proudest of her I have ever been. There is nothing gained in life from sitting on your laurels and accepting a situation that makes you unhappy. Much prayer was involved in making this choice and thankfully,but not to proudly, I can say there were times when we could see God leading us and our decisions. I love my wife and am so proud of her!

In another job related note I am going to be doing a short tour of duty, about two months at this point, out in the mill. I will be doing shift work and shadowing two different shift supervisors a month a piece to get some management experience. I will eventually be applying for the job for a one to two year stint and I wanted to do the training now. I don't know how happy my wife is about the shift work but it is important for furthering my career as an engineer. It is really the only way that a process engineer(me) can get any experience managing people if I ever want to go into operations. I start next Tuesday night shifts are 9:30pm - 5:30am, 5:30am - 1:30pm, and 1:30pm - 9:30pm. Seven nights with two days off then seven afternoons with two days off, finally seven days then a long 3 day weekend that actually falls on a weekend. ANYWAY wish me luck on my new adventure, it should be quite interesting for the wife and I to both be trying out new jobs at the same time but hey God doesn't give us anything we can't handle.

On another note Mario Kart Wii is freaking amazing! This is the first game out for Wii I think that has really made use of everything that the new system has to offer. The online play is outstanding, anytime you want you can get on and play with as many as 12 other players anywhere in the world. I have played a good 300 online races so far and probably averaged 9 opponents and with the rating system you can earn some street cred by winning. Also one of the unlockable riders is your Mii. It even takes into account the "weight" you set for your Mii originally when picking your kart size. AMAZING!

Finally I want to preface my two books this post with a little back story on the first. Usually I am proud of the books I read so much so that I push them on everyone I meet, jumping at the chance to tell them about it. In a round about way I hope that some day they will be walking through Books-a-Million and slow down by an end cap and say "Hey, that crazy guy sitting outside Starbucks told me how good this book was, I think I will buy it." I know it's nerdy but honestly it's how I pick alot of the books I read so be careful what you recommend to me because they go right on my list to read and then right to my blog when I finish them. I know that was a random sidetrack but I told that to tell this. The first book on my list wasn't one of these, I was nervous reading it and much like now I had to give everyone a preface before I would tell them what the book was about.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach (4.5 out of 5) - I read her first book Stiff which I put on the blog back in April of 2007 which was about the history and uses of human cadavers. This is about the history and study of sex as a science. In the book she continually defends sex researchers as being pre-judged as perverts for their choice of the sexual sciences and no matter how interesting and scientific the book was I honestly felt a little perverty, not when I was reading, but when I was telling people about it (which was not very often). It is full of so much information and her writing style keeps science fun and interesting. If you get a chance read it and maybe the knowledge gained will be enough to out weigh the small loss of respect you may get from that Joe at Starbucks who looks at you funny when you tell him what you are reading.

1776 - David McCullough (5 out of 5) - For my first historical non-fiction I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. The author has a great way of making the facts flow together like an amazing fictional story but it's all true. I picked this up at the urging of Jason G. and was spurred on by the great John Adams miniseries on HBO. Also, I never realized how close we were to not being Americans as we now know it and if not for the gumption of Washington and a few green colonialists we might still be a British Colony.

The Appeal - John Grisham (4 out of 5) - Another good and exciting law story with a twist, this time the story starts after the judge has already ruled against a giant law firm that has polluted a town and caused hundreds of cancer deaths. The big company does everything it can to affect the appeal process including and not limited to funding the campaign of a unknown lawyer to oust a supreme court judge. Good book, not his best but most of the time his good books are much better than anything any other author wishes they could write.